Shoot First and Ask Questions Later
Scientific Fraud and Conflict Of Interest In Vaccine Research, Licensing &
Policymaking
By Michael Belkin
Presented at The 2nd International Public Conference on Vaccination 2000, Arlington
Virginia (10-15-2000)
In Business School, (Organizational Behavior) we studied what can happen to
organizations that suffer ethical management breakdowns (such as Johns Manville with
asbestos, Owens Corning breast implants, etc.). Nothing illustrates the syndrome of
management ethical failure more clearly than the current scandal faced by Firestone
and Ford. Those companies denied and concealed deaths and injuries caused by tread
separation and a high center of gravity in the Ford Explorer for years. Management
knew, denied and concealed that their products were defective and were killing people
-- the classic ethical breakdown.
In the vaccine industry, scientific fraud and conflicts of interest are
causing a similar (but much larger) cycle of deaths and injuries that is being
concealed and denied by regulators and vaccine manufacturers. However, (as
with Firestone and Ford) a noose of their own making may be slowly tightening around
the vaccine scandal perpetrator's necks.
Financial conflict of interest is a complex issue -- because few investors
(except perhaps Tibetan Monks or Jesuit Priests) are likely to not have pharmaceutical
shares in their diversified portfolios in this day and age. But financial conflicts of
interest and scientific fraud (that lead to corrupt public policy) damage the public
interest and could eventually bankrupt vaccine manufacturers that have perverted the
regulatory process. Shareholders should investigate the issue carefully.
There's only about 100 US Deaths from Firestone tire blowouts. There are
thousands of deaths and many thousands of cases of disability and
neurological damage lurking in the FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting
System (VAERS). This is a potential legal scandal of much larger scope than the
Firestone/Ford episode.
US vaccines are licensed by the FDA and immunization recommendations are
made by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which is a
committee whose members are appointed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
ACIP immunization recommendations are enacted into law by public health
departments and/or legislatures at the state level, via the energetic efforts of vaccine
manufacturer sales representatives. While the ACIP does nothing more than craft and
finalize the exact wording detailing recommended doses and ages for administration of
vaccines, ACIP recommendations are extraordinarily influential, because they get
turned into mandates at the state level.
These vaccine mandates are despotic intrusions into personal liberty and
democracy. School districts and social service departments demand that: You must
inject these viruses and bacteria into your body (or your child's body) or you (or your
child) may not attend school, you may be charged with child abuse and your children
may be removed from your home, placed in foster care and forcibly vaccinated.
Such intimidation is taking place with greater intensity and frequency as more and
more ACIP recommendations and subsequent state vaccine mandates are enacted.
Furthermore, parents are being wrongfully accused and convicted of shaken
baby syndrome in cases where their children die immediately after
vaccination and have swollen brains in the autopsy report (brain inflammation is a
classic vaccine adverse reaction).
The enforcement of ACIP vaccine recommendations at the state and local level by
plodding and heavy-handed health and social service department employees is a
threat to the neurological systems of those vaccinated. Vaccine adverse
reactions are defined as the same thing as disease complications in the medical
literature -- encephalitis. "Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (postinfectious
encephalomyelitis--see also Acute Viral Encephalitis and Aseptic Meningitis) is
characterized by perivascular Central Nervous System demyelination, which can occur
spontaneously but usually follows a viral infection or VIRAL VACCINATION (or, very
rarely, BACTERIAL VACCINATION), suggesting an immunologic cause." Merck Manual
(www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/section14/chapter180/180a.htm)
Thousands of reports of adverse reactions such as convulsions, brain
inflammation, inconsolable screaming syndrome, SIDS and neurological
diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, Transverse Myelitis and Guillain-Barre
Syndrome continue to flood into the FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting
System (VAERS), where they are largely ignored or tolerated as the cost of
some mythical victory over disease. Children and adults are developing the
same encephalitic and neurological complications after vaccination that
science takes credit for eliminating through immunization -- but the CDC,
ACIP and American Academy of Pediatrics all insist the vaccine adverse
reactions don't exist or are coincidences.
Their double standard is: You are required to receive this vaccination so
you and society don't develop encephalitic and neurological complications
from disease, but if you die or develop encephalitic or neurological
complications immediately after receiving the vaccine (which contains the
same virus or bacteria that causes the neurological complications), then it's
all in your imagination, it's a coincidence or we're still doing studies and we'll
get back to you when they are done.
Shoot first and ask questions later.
Unelected, unregulated and unaccountable ACIP medical bureaucrats have blatant
financial conflicts of interest and are committing scientific fraud by recommending
administration of vaccines that have not been tested for safety in the age groups or
populations targeted. Dr. John Modlin, current Chairman of the ACIP (Merck
Immunization Advisory Board 1996 - present, Merck shareholder) gave his definition of
scientific validity in a March 1999 University of New Hampshire debate:
"Has the information withstood the test of peer review? Has the information been
published in a respected medical or scientific journal? ... this is the standard that you
should hold me to today ... has the information been published in a scientifically
reputable journal?"
One month earlier at the February 1999 ACIP meeting Chairman Modlin lobbied
for the ACIP to recommend the Rotavirus vaccine for premature infants, although no
safety studies had been done, much less peer reviewed or published:
".. available data are insufficient to fully establish the safety and efficacy of
rotavirus vaccine in premature infants ... there is a section under Adverse
Events that details what little information there actually are with respect to
premature infants ... To my knowledge we don't have data from a clinical trial
specifically ... Some bit of information from Seattle, as I recall, that had
suggested that was a slight increase in relative risk for hospitalization for
premature infants ... Obviously a situation where we have to make a
judgment in the absence of data, and with a vaccine that has not yet been
tested in the group ..." (ACIP transcript, pages 102-112)
Modlin then held a vote and the recommendation for premature infants passed
nine to one -- Modlin voted yes.
Shoot first and ask questions later.
As a member of The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee
(VRBPAC) and Chairman of the Rotavirus working group, Modlin had data showing a
risk of intussusception (life threatening bowel obstructions) in clinical trials of Rotavirus
vaccine before that February 1999 ACIP meeting. The Rotavirus vaccine was
withdrawn from the market in October 1999 after 113 cases of
intussusception. One premature baby died after getting rotavirus vaccine in a
vaccine cocktail and another five-month-old infant died after developing
intussusception five days after receipt of the vaccine.
By ACIP Chairman Modlin's own definition, the ACIP's recommendation was
scientifically invalid. I'll go one step further and say the ACIP Chairman committed
blatant scientific fraud by issuing an ACIP recommendation that Rotavirus
vaccine be given to premature newborns without scientific proof that it was
safe to do so. And what was the penalty? Modlin was apparently reappointed to
another term as ACIP Chairman by the CDC. Commit scientific fraud that causes death
and grievous injury -- and get reappointed. That is the incentive system in the US
vaccine regulatory system.
Another case suggesting scientific fraud is the still-existing 1991 ACIP
recommendation that every newborn baby receive the hepatitis B vaccine in
the hospital within hours of birth. Samuel L. Katz, MD, who instituted that policy
when he was ACIP Chairman in 1991 has admitted they had no peer-reviewed,
published studies showing that it was safe to give to newborns when the ACIP made
that recommendation. (Katz is former Chairman Committee on Infectious Diseases of
the American Academy of Pediatrics, former Chairman of the Public Policy Council of
the Infectious Diseases Society of America).
When I asked Katz in the question/answer session after his April 12, 2000
NY/Cornell Medical School lecture on "Vaccines in the New Millennium" what peerreviewed, published safety study he used when he was ACIP Chairman to recommend
at-birth immunization of newborns in 1991 he answered: "you are quite right there
was no published peer-reviewed study" (tape and transcript available). Newborns
have negligible risk of contracting the hepatitis B virus, unless the mother is infected.
That risk can easily be determined by a maternal blood test. No US vaccine had ever
been mandated for newborn babies before. But Katz and the ACIP decided it was safe
to vaccinate not-at-risk for hepatitis B newborns without any proper safety study.
Shoot first and ask questions later.
The results of that uncontrolled experiment are in: upwards of 36,000 adverse
reactions and more than 440 deaths (VAERS). My daughter died after receiving the
hepatitis B vaccine. Katz also admitted that vaccine adverse reactions are the same
thing as neurological complications from disease when I pressed him if he disagreed
with that definition from the Merck Manual saying "with measles vaccine it is
possible that maybe one out of 150,000 children who get the vaccine may get
something that mimics measles encephalitis."
Parents report their children were perfectly normal until receiving the MMR
measles/mumps/rubella vaccine, at which point the children became autistic
after a neurological adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine ("something that
mimics measles encephalitis"). The incidence of measles disease may be down to
about 100 cases annually in the US, but the rate of Autism has soared
hundreds of percent -- a disease historically called "post-encephalitic
syndrome."
For vaccine manufacturers -- the ACIP is a gold mine. ACIP
recommendations are a license for vaccine manufacturers to use state governments,
school systems and social service systems as a marketing department for their
products. With an ACIP recommendation in hand, vaccine manufacturers use the
government to say "you must buy my product and inject it into your body, even if it
kills you or causes brain damage."
This is a huge Anti-Trust violation. The Orwellian spectacle of
monopolistic and oligopolistic pharmaceutical manufacturers subverting
government agencies to ram unsafe products down children's veins is a
violation of the basic principals of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Our forefathers said "No Taxation Without Representation" to their British
oppressors. I say "No Vaccination Without Representation" to the corporate tyrants at
Merck, Smithkline and other vaccine manufacturers who have so utterly subverted the
US vaccine regulatory process.
Dr. John Modlin must be removed as Chairman of the ACIP and the scientifically
invalid newborn hepatitis B vaccine policy instituted without safety studies by Dr. Katz
must be revoked. The investors and directors of vaccine manufacturers such as Merck
and Smithkline must recognize that those companies are conducting the classic ethical
blunder of selling products that are killing and injuring people -- and then concealing
and denying the evidence.
A Canadian doctor who treats hepatitis B vaccine adverse event victims told me
when he called Merck, they told him he was the first one who had ever called them
with such a problem. There are upwards of 36,000 reports in VAERS and I would be
delighted to provide them to anyone who cares to investigate the issue for themselves,
sorted by deaths, convulsions, screaming syndrome, liver disorder and
neurological damage -- median onset one day after vaccination.
This is the CDC's Mission Statement
"To promote the health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease,
injury and disability." "CDC pledges to be a diligent steward of the funds entrusted to
it." "CDC pledges to base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific
data, openly and objectively derived." CDC Core values: Accountability -- we ensure
that our services are based on sound science and meet real public needs ..."
That's What They Say, Here's What They Do
The CDC misallocated funds that were targeted for chronic fatigue syndrome (a
vaccine adverse event) to some other non-vaccine related pet project. The ACIP
Chairman recommended the Rotavirus Vaccine for premature infants without
any data whatsoever showing that it was safe. The ACIP recommended the
hepatitis B vaccine for newborns without any public, peer-reviewed, published study
showing it was safe. The head of epidemiology of the CDC presented a slide showing
serious reactions to the hepatitis B vaccine were approximately 10 times higher than
for other vaccines at the February 1999 ACIP meeting. The CDC has ignored FOIA
requests for the scientific data used to justify the 1991 newborn hep B vaccine
mandate.
The CDC has violated its own mission statement and current leadership needs to
be replaced. Most people don't realize that the CDC is a quasi-Military organization that
takes great pride in dressing up in uniforms and strutting around one day a week.
Source: http://www.laleva.cc/choice/vaccine_bekin.html